Regarding Conscious Disregard
I recently hosted a small, private jam session. Very informal. Between tunes, pickers conversed about whatever came up. Like the question concerning actor Alec Baldwin having been indicted in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on a movie set in New Mexico: Shouldn’t an actor be able to trust the prop master who hands him a “cold gun?”
Maybe not, explained the lawyer in our group. There was, perhaps, conscious disregard of a known risk. Some of us had a chuckle at learning a new legal term. And then asked if this means that any actor handed a gun theoretically filled with blanks—as opposed to real ammo—is legally obligated to insult the prop master by double checking that the gun is loaded with nothing but dummy bullets?
Perhaps.
I wrote down the legal phrase for future pondering.
I wish I’d known that term when I volunteered to help chaperone a field trip with my daughter’s elementary school. Most volunteer chaperones found themselves in charge of two children—one of whom was their own offspring. However, since I had a background in special education, I was assigned a third child. The youth who couldn’t follow directions. Who wouldn’t stay with the group unless physically tethered. Surely the teacher handing out chaperone assignments experienced a conscious disregard of a known risk the moment she gave me more children than I have hands.
We completed our museum tour unscathed—except for my jangled nerves. But risk did occur.
For a dozen years, I was the speech therapist for several rural schools on the Navajo Reservation. Annually, I hosted an end of the year pizza party at each school—except for the tiny school that had no facility for cooking pizzas (and was definitely out of range for pizza delivery). Several teachers helped chaperone. The kids were corralled on the bus. And in the restaurant, I personally monitored the exits at all times.
Then we took the kids to a city playground. Yikes! I patrolled the perimeter like a nervous nightwatchman. There was no conscious disregard on my part. Unless you consider the fact that I did not examine the bus engine or vet the driver. I just took the principal’s word on transportation. Much like Alec Baldwin might have taken the prop master’s word.
We all take these kinds of risks. Otherwise, we’d have trouble getting through a single day.
However, this legal phrase really holds water when I think about the Missouri legislative majority who voted against banning minors from openly carrying firearms in public without adult supervision. Their vote made it perfectly legal for a child to stroll down a Missouri street with an AR-15. Now, if that youngster—whose reasoning skills have not yet fully matured—should happen to fire that gun at live people, I’m pretty sure the child would be in some deep… stuff. As would the child’s parents. But didn’t those legislators display some conscious disregard of a known risk? Could their disregard be considered criminal?
How about the conscious disregard of the appellate court justice who denied the Texas woman an abortion despite the findings of her physician and the lower court, who declared her very life in danger without one? I’m pleased she took matters into her own hands and fled the state, but if she had remained in Texas—and died…? A major case of conscious disregard of a known risk in my book.
I have no opinion on Alec Baldwin’s guilt or innocence. I wasn’t there. And I’m not on the jury. But, hereinafter, I will regard “disregard” differently.